I disagree. We're shown several advertisements for Joi bots. The ads tell us in thirty foot tall letters: She'll be what you want her to be. She'll say what you want her to say.

This one said, I love you. I need you. I want to have sex with you. I'll be like a real girlfriend. There exists one special child, and you are The One!

But she doesn't love him. She's a mass-produced bot. She's merely a more sophisticated version of the Facebook feed which populates with stories that are most likely to interest you.

I still think this Joi was something different. Its been a week now, but what I remember she wanted to experience physical relations with K and took steps to make that happen without Ks direction. I mean it could be an extrapolation made by her programming but I think she was an AI that was sentient with its own wants and desires.

He better be. He did not survive in Vegas all those years in that fucking radiation at some hotel casino if he wasn't. Unless there's more stuff that is not explicitly stated that would not make him one.

Didnt Ks scan coming into Vegas advise the radiation level was nominal? Besides if Deckard is a replicant it kills one of the defining themes of Blade Runner....dehumanized man rediscovers his humanity.

I treat the new movie as a different story. Did the old movie version of Roy Batty's death scene kill the novel's theme that replicants are different than humans because the replicants are incapable of forming an emotional connection? In the book, replicants are gradually revealed to be monstrous. In the first movie, Roy Batty is a Christ figure when he dies.

If this is a re-imagining instead of a sequel, Deckard can be ambiguous in one movie and specified in another.

Well I know I said I didn't want a sequel. But that sounds like another movie right there. Villeneuve (or Shinichiro Watanabe) is one of the only directors I could expect to pull it off. Blade Runner needs to be cerebral, with simmering exposition and a lot of things happening under the surface. Others would try to turn it into an action-adventure film with on-the-nose exposition.

I still think this Joi was something different. Its been a week now, but what I remember she wanted to experience physical relations with K and took steps to make that happen without Ks direction. I mean it could be an extrapolation made by her programming but I think she was an AI that was sentient with its own wants and desires.

I think Nick is right. People who believe that Joi was something different is really only basing this belief in hopeful fantasy--the movie does not support her being 'special' in addition to her programming.

- K bought her a licensed upgrade, the emmanator. She was behaving as programmed when using the device that let her out of the house.

- When Joi set up the sex party, she was working as designed-- she said 'hold still while I sync'. This seems like a reasonable function for a companion hologram. People say 'hey she called and set up a prostitute, this shows she cares'. Honestly it sounds like a paid referral bonus: Hey my computer knows I need new plumbing and called a really good plumber to come over and give me a quote!

- It's misogynist male fantasy: "Gee the sexy companion girl that I bought to please me, is REALLY into me and after she got to know me she TOTALLY would like nothing more than to please me with her own free will." Actually in retrospect, I don't think K ever 'set her free'. He broke her tracking antenna, but freedom would mean releasing her to the cloud? She was always in his pocket and always supported him unquestioningly.

Wallace company (striving to make money) had made millions of 'Joi clones'. I think it would be disaster if the company didn't make sure she could not in any way achieve independence. Think of all the guys she would dump! lol

I still think this Joi was something different. Its been a week now, but what I remember she wanted to experience physical relations with K and took steps to make that happen without Ks direction. I mean it could be an extrapolation made by her programming but I think she was an AI that was sentient with its own wants and desires.

The movie makes a pretty clear point that she is not different - she just feels different to K, until he recognizes she was just a product in the third act when the interactive Joi advertisement calls him "Joe".

- It's misogynist male fantasy: "Gee the sexy companion girl that I bought to please me, is REALLY into me and after she got to know me she TOTALLY would like nothing more than to please me with her own free will." Actually in retrospect, I don't think K ever 'set her free'. He broke her tracking antenna, but freedom would mean releasing her to the cloud? She was always in his pocket and always supported him unquestioningly.

It's fantasy. It all seemed fully programmed, K didn't break through anything, Joi was just acting the way she was programmed to. I found most of his interactions with her to be rather depressing (and the movie seemed a lot like a mix of Her and Children of Men), but it is AI relating to AI in those scenes -- while K got past his limitations, it was never suggested that Joi did.

while K got past his limitations, it was never suggested that Joi did.

I think it was suggested that she did. I think we see Joi through K's eyes we want her to be more than what they're telling us she is. We (or I) find out at the same time that K finds out that he's (we've) been played.

It was creepy and misogynist if the girl was really an ai trapped by her programming and confusing the issue of consent by writing the character to be in love with him in the end.

Kind of in the vein of last years movie Passengers with Jlaw and Chris Pratt...

I read it differently, there are all sorts of different levels of AI, in her case it's dynamic dialog but otherwise follows a "narrative". Not a fully developed being like the Replicants, and she isn't making her own decisions at any point. It's product, like an elaborate mostly linear decision tree. It's real to him until it's not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Timber

I think it was suggested that she did. I think we see Joi through K's eyes we want her to be more than what they're telling us she is. We (or I) find out at the same time that K finds out that he's (we've) been played.

I agree, it's all a pitch to "improve the experience" through upgrades. I just mean that she was doing what she was scripted to do.

I read it differently, there are all sorts of different levels of AI, in her case it's dynamic dialog but otherwise follows a "narrative". Not a fully developed being like the Replicants, and she isn't making her own decisions at any point. It's product, like an elaborate mostly linear decision tree. It's real to him until it's not.

Sorry, I should say it is creepy and misogynist IF you believe she was a special becoming-aware type of ai

I agree with your take though, she was just a product behaving normally.

I think Nick is right. People who believe that Joi was something different is really only basing this belief in hopeful fantasy--the movie does not support her being 'special' in addition to her programming.

- K bought her a licensed upgrade, the emmanator. She was behaving as programmed when using the device that let her out of the house.

- When Joi set up the sex party, she was working as designed-- she said 'hold still while I sync'. This seems like a reasonable function for a companion hologram. People say 'hey she called and set up a prostitute, this shows she cares'. Honestly it sounds like a paid referral bonus: Hey my computer knows I need new plumbing and called a really good plumber to come over and give me a quote!

- It's misogynist male fantasy: "Gee the sexy companion girl that I bought to please me, is REALLY into me and after she got to know me she TOTALLY would like nothing more than to please me with her own free will." Actually in retrospect, I don't think K ever 'set her free'. He broke her tracking antenna, but freedom would mean releasing her to the cloud? She was always in his pocket and always supported him unquestioningly.

Wallace company (striving to make money) had made millions of 'Joi clones'. I think it would be disaster if the company didn't make sure she could not in any way achieve independence. Think of all the guys she would dump! lol

And now that I think about it, the streetwalker seemed to know the drill. Either Joi explained it carefully as part of the negotiation, or the streetwalker had done it before.

I don't buy the "sparkle in the eyes" argument either. K got his big bladerunner 'retirement' bonus and spent at least part of it on an mobility upgrade for Joi. If she's simply preprogrammed, of course she acted all happy and excited when he bought an expensive Wallace brand device. If I were a designer for Wallace Corp, I'd have her do the same thing.

"Oh, Save Ferris, this is such a wonderful gift! Thank you so much!" Don't all women in the sex trade today act that way? I've never been with a prostitute, or been in the champagne room, or had an expensive mistress, but I gather it happens a lot.

Watched it last night on IMAX. I usually don't bother with it, but it was the best time since I knew it would go long.

But I walked out speechless for a couple minutes. I was with a couple of friends and they agreed. One of them had seen it already, and he said it was even better the second time.

This is a rare gem of a movie - the sequel that goes back to the franchise years (decades!) later and manages to reach almost the same heights as the original. I won't say it surpassed the original, but it is one of the few times you can truly say something is a love letter to its predecessor.

I'm certainly glad for the long run time and also the three short films, as there was just so much happening here and I was completely willing to stay in this world for hours and just soak it all in (and that says something when we're describing a hellscape like this).

I also thought for a moment there that Joi was becoming self-aware, but I also think her purpose in the story was to raise that question, if only for a moment, to make us see K choosing his own destiny instead of sticking with the pre-packaged entertainment.

And Ford was just perfect. About the time I started wondering when he would come in, a few minutes later he showed up, so that was a good bit of storytelling there (and I couldn't help but laugh when he made sure the label on the bottle of Johnny Walker Black was facing to the camera).

I was planning on buying the Bluray sight unseen as a companion to the original, but now I'll gladly buy it to own such a masterwork of cinema. As I said, I saw the IMAX version, and I'm hoping there's a Blu version of that to show off all that incredible design.

Saw it today. Really enjoyed it. You all seemed to have a debate about the treatment of women. The original Blade Runner is itself cruel to women. Deckert hurts and humiliates Rachael, invites her to a burlesque club that's "not her kind of place", he chases a replicant woman down and shoots her in the back, in fact the only successful Blade Runner retiring that he does is women (Rachael shoots Leon). Oh and the love scene is...not a love scene.

The violence toward women is just one of a myriad other things duplicated in the sequel.

I've got questions about the ending: K says, "Everyone will think you drowned, so you can go see your daughter now." Are we really supposed to believe Deckert is safe? Wallace still wants him and the army of revolutionary replicants want him dead.

Also, I haven't gotten my head around the memory of the wooden horse. How did it get into K's head?

I want to also mention that one of the things I like most about the original, this sequel completely failed to do...film in actual Los Angeles locations!

Saw it today. Really enjoyed it. You all seemed to have a debate about the treatment of women. The original Blade Runner is itself cruel to women. Deckert hurts and humiliates Rachael, invites her to a burlesque club that's "not her kind of place", he chases a replicant woman down and shoots her in the back, in fact the only successful Blade Runner retiring that he does is women (Rachael shoots Leon). Oh and the love scene is...not a love scene.

The violence toward women is just one of a myriad other things duplicated in the sequel.

I've got questions about the ending: K says, "Everyone will think you drowned, so you can go see your daughter now." Are we really supposed to believe Deckert is safe? Wallace still wants him and the army of revolutionary replicants want him dead.

Also, I haven't gotten my head around the memory of the wooden horse. How did it get into K's head?

I want to also mention that one of the things I like most about the original, this sequel completely failed to do...film in actual Los Angeles locations!

To your first question-- who knows. The excuses I keep reading is that this was K's story, blah, blah, blah. They obviously had plans for a 3rd film, so there's no point in asking that. I've been asking since the fucking film premiered.

As far as the wooden horse -- Deckard's daughter was the best memory creator (subcontractor, whatever) and I'm sure she implanted them in K right when he was being created in the tube.

Maybe she wanted to give him something genuine rather than made up by her wholecloth? I dunno. Ill have to watch it more on home vid. Does anyone remember if she gave any indication that she knew K when he came to talk to her?